Winter Olympics Medals over Time

1. Medal Counts over Time

Country summaries: Total medals won

(Note: the following analyses treat duplicate medals earned in team or partner events as a single medal. See code for details.)

  • Here is a preview of a tibble showing the number of Winter Games each country medaled in:
## # A tibble: 6 x 2
## # Groups:   Country [6]
##   Country     n
##   <fct>   <int>
## 1 AUS         6
## 2 AUT        22
## 3 BEL         4
## 4 BLR         6
## 5 BUL         4
## 6 CAN        22
  • Here is a preview of another tibble showing the number of each type of medal each country has won, sorted by most won medals:
## # A tibble: 6 x 3
## # Groups:   Country [3]
##   Country Medal      n
##   <fct>   <fct>  <int>
## 1 RUS     Gold     133
## 2 GER     Silver   121
## 3 GER     Gold     119
## 4 NOR     Gold     116
## 5 NOR     Silver   110
## 6 RUS     Silver   100
Plots of all medals over time, faceted by country:

Spotlight on countries’ conversion rates:

I was interested in comparing countries’ “conversion rates” – which countries were the best and worst at winning not just any medal, but gold in particular?

Here is a snapshot of the most victorious countries – those with the highest proportion of all medals that were gold:

## # A tibble: 6 x 6
##   Country  gold silver_or_bronze total prop_gold  rank
##   <fct>   <int>            <int> <int>     <dbl> <int>
## 1 EST         4                3     7     0.571     1
## 2 ESP         1                1     2     0.500     2
## 3 KOR        21               26    47     0.447     3
## 4 AUS         5                7    12     0.417     4
## 5 RUS       133              199   332     0.401     5
## 6 SVK         2                3     5     0.400     6

But gold medal winners already get plenty of attention; I wanted to explore the countries that kept coming up short. Here are the most consistently disappointed countries – those with the lowest ratio of gold medals to all medals won.

## # A tibble: 6 x 6
##   Country  gold silver_or_bronze total prop_gold  rank
##   <fct>   <int>            <int> <int>     <dbl> <int>
## 1 KAZ         1                6     7     0.143     1
## 2 SLO         2               12    14     0.143     2
## 3 BUL         1                5     6     0.167     3
## 4 CZE         9               40    49     0.184     4
## 5 BEL         1                4     5     0.200     5
## 6 JPN        10               35    45     0.222     6

In visual terms:

2. Medal Counts adjusted by Population, GDP

I created three rankings of total gold medals each country won across all years of competition:

  1. Overall gold medals (unadjusted)
  2. Gold medals adjusted by country population (rescaled to millions of residents)
  3. Gold Medals adjusted by GDP per capita (measured as US $1,000 per resident)

The results are fairly consistent at the high end of the rankings, and bode especially well for Germany, which is either first or second in each ranking; similarly, Norway is either second or third in each. Russia does not look as victorious when its large population is accounted for – it actually falls out of the top 10 entirely.

3. Host Country Advantage

Only two countries have hosted the Winter Games more than twice: the U.S. and France. Below are visualizations of all medals won by those countries’ teams across the years, highlighting the years in which they hosted the Games.

USA
## Warning: Removed 1 rows containing missing values (geom_path).

With the exception of the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, it does seem that Team USA won its most medals when it was hosting.

France

The picture is more mixed for France: it had the advantage (or disadvantage) of being the guinea pig for all future Winter Olympic Games in 1924 (Chamonix), where it performed quite poorly. France has hosted three times – second only to the U.S. – but only its performance at Albertville in 1992 seemed to benefit from a home advantage. Fortunately, they’ve been steadily improving since 2006.

4. Country success by sport / discipline / event

Below is a plot of all countries that have ever medaled in speed skating. Norway and the Netherlands clearly lead the pack, followed by Russia and the United States.

(Note: I could not get reorder() to work for this plot.)

5. Most successful athletes

I created plots of the athletes with the most gold medals to their names, for both men and women. Certain countries clearly dominate (Norway on the men’s side and Russia on the women’s).

Interactivity

6. Make two plots interactive

Below are interactive versions of two previously presented plots: that of the Olympians with the most gold medal, and that of USA’s wins over time, highlighting the years when it hosted the Games.

For the top athletes plot, interactivity makes for better legibility, as it may be difficult for a reader to keep track of the y-axis values as they scan across facets. The hover key also reveals the athlete’s country without having to refer to the legend.

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For the plot of Team USA’s medals over time, interactivity is useful for helping the reader discover for him or herself that the number of medals did seem to mostly be highest when USA was hosting the games.

7. Data Table

Below is an interactive DataTable containing information on the number of gold medals each athlete won over all years of competition. It will allow readers to sort and search by sport, country, athlete name and gender, and the total number of gold medals won.